We’re back for another session of question time with The Farming Forum!
We invited farmers to submit their questions about the Environment Land Management scheme and the Agricultural Transition Plan to The Farming Forum’s director, Clive Bailye. Clive is joined by David Kennedy, Defra’s Director for Food, Farming & Biosecurity and Janet Hughes, Defra’s Future Farming and Countryside Programme Director.
Find out the answers to your questions:
0:00 Introduction
1:58 Are you going to take inflation into account in the payment calculations?
2:29 Given that ELM is likely to be about delivering public goods not deliverable by the market, will Defra properly value these goods and move away from the current ‘income foregone’ method of agri-environment payment calculation and reward farmers fairly for the goods and services we are led to believe the public want?
4:40 Can you get a few farms to do a dry run to make sure the inevitable new computer system works ok for the new scheme, all information can be inputted okay and that the system can cope with things like common land grazing where the same area is often listed on multiple applications?
6:28 How are you going to ensure that the scheme will hit the ground running when it comes online, and payments will be made in a timely and correct manner?
10:31 When will we start to see some indication of payment rates on offer?
11:55 Will the uptake of ELMs increase imports from countries with a higher carbon footprint in food production and lower welfare standards than the UK? How will you explain this to the public?
16:50 Is it possible to tailor ELMs to regions rather than have a one size fits all scheme? At the moment, there are plenty of options for east Anglian arable farmers, but barely any for livestock farmers and mixed farmers in particular?
18:40 I am very concerned that DEFRA regularly refer to the need for "trusted advisers" to facilitate farmers delivery under ELM. Do DEFRA recognise the risk that those advisers will, similarly, raise their rates to take advantage of the scheme and, if so, how do they intend to avoid such advisers swallowing up an unacceptable proportion of the funding intended to support farmers?
21:01 Will payments be made to farmers who might have been implementing some of things they require for decades and not just to those that convert over just to receive the sub?
24:00 Will the ELMs include a simple Permanent Pasture Payment?
